Diasporic Anxiety and Ambivalence in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

Abstract

This paper explores diasporic tensions like identity crisis, anxiety, and ambivalence in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. It argues that Gogol, a representative of the Indian-born American, suffers a more acute identity crisis, anxiety, and ambivalence than his parents do. Ashoke and Ashima, the first-generation emigrants, resist hybridized identity and keep a conscious connection with the root by maintaining Indian culture, religion, and ideologies in their host land America. On the other hand, Gogol faces severe crises with his name right after his birth and desperately tries to assimilate into the mainstream American culture and tradition, but finally realizes, with deeper shock, that he belongs nowhere. His attraction to the host country and its culture turns out to be repulsive and produces ambivalence in him. Gogol succeeds in becoming an American ‘almost total’ but ’not quite’. This paper draws on the relevant post-colonial concepts like hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence advocated by Homi K. Bhabha, and validates the argument that Gogol is fated to become a diasporic nomad.